When Sorkin Met Carr

Somehow I missed this when NY Times’ media columnist and author David Carr tweeted this out — but here he is being interviewed by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the best film of last year and won an Oscar for it.  It’s a great interview – that David Carr.  When he blew through the Oscar scene it was apparent from the start that there was never anyone like him to begin with and there never would be anyone like him again.   He always had one foot in and one foot out but the truth is, it does ruin a person’s enjoyment of film (although after 12 years I’ve discovered, suddenly, that it only ruins Oscar movies  – the ones that don’t enter the race manage to stay pure to me – which is why I go to Cannes every year, to cleanse the palate).

Carr is, of course, out front to help promote the film Page One, otherwise known as the New York Times doc.  This helps the film, but it also helps the Times, which is the real reason, I suspect, he’s doing it.

Here is an exchange between the two:

SORKIN: I have two more questions—the first one is a little easier, and the second one might not be so easy. In addition to the high-minded work that you do for the Times, you also covered the Golden Globes and the Oscars for The Carpetbagger, the paper’s awardsseason blog. Is that something that was fun for you?

CARR: I did that up until two years ago, and then I stopped doing it because I’m a movie lover. I’m the kind of guy who shows up on the day a film opens and sits in the third row with a big box of popcorn and expects it to be really great. But what I learned in the four years that I covered the Oscars is that many of the people that I had so much regard for—and, frankly, awe for in terms of what they were able to do with the tools of filmmaking—were in fact monsters in some ways and really not that great to be around. Of course, I did meet a lot of other people who were grand and wonderful, but the look behind the curtain was eroding my romance with American film. Going to the movies is a very important part of my life. You know, if you tell me you’re going to make a big, two-hour long story about the development of a social network, I’d say there’s no way that’s going to happen. But David Fincher got some schmuck—I forget the guy who wrote it—and made it riveting. And then you get Trent Reznor doing the music, and you’ve got these ra-ta-tat scenes in bars and courtrooms . . . It’s just, like, I don’t really want to know how those guys pulled it off, I just want to sit there and enjoy it.